Lost Worlds - DVD

Lost Worlds (History Channel)

Amazon Price: $27.99 List Price: $49.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: A&E - Model: AAED76905D Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $9.72

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Mostly Speculation 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

First I would like to say that I am a big history channel fan. I own quite a few of their documentaries. This series is one of the worst I own.

The titles of the episodes seem exciting at first, but when one finds out the sheer non-fact based history behind most of the episodes, the result is disapointing. I mean honestly; how much can you really know about "LOST WORLDS" if there is little evidence to support their existence in the first place?

Most of the episodes run the same course. The introduction is given. The "experts" then find a tiny piece of circumstantial evidence. The rest of the episode is spent on a wild completely speculated tangeant of non-history based imagination. There is very little fact that goes into most of documentaries.

If you are looking for a history channel documentary series that is truely history, and is extremely factual I would go with "Engineering an Empire" with Peter Weller. The History Channel Presents Engineering an Empire - The Complete Series (Collector's Edition) However my suggestion is to steer clear of this series. Save you money!

Editorial Review:

Incorporating gorgeous footage & cutting edge technology with incredible stories from around the globe this series brings to life th lost worlds of vanished civilizations. Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 02/27/2007 Run time: 600 minutes Rating: Nr

World War II - The Lost Color Archives

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the 1980s determined researchers began scouring the world for color film shot during World War II, and the result of their quest is spectacular. Seeing the war through the ubiquitous black-and-white footage has always made the experience somewhat distant, but in clear, crisp color, the enormity of the war and its horrors is startling and dramatic. Films of Nazi rallies are all the more disturbing; a viewer seeing the scene in color realizes the massive crowds saluting Hitler are no longer gray and faceless masses, but gatherings of well- dressed civilians. Color combat footage, from across Europe and the Pacific, is frighteningly immediate, and some of it, showing the wounded, the dead, and even prisoners being executed, will no doubt be disturbing for many viewers. Violence and destruction on an unimaginable scale is vividly put on display, as are smaller moments of soldiers smiling for the camera or liberated prisoners from the concentration camps staring in pained bewilderment. The episodes, produced by the History Channel, are introduced by veteran journalist Roger Mudd, and the narration for each individual segment typically contains excerpts from letters and diaries describing events close to those depicted in the film footage. The footage used is of a surprisingly high quality (much of it was shot and stored away, virtually unseen for decades), and it provides a stunning look at how the war appeared to those fighting it. --Robert J. McNamara

The Lost World

Amazon Price: List Price: $39.95 By: A&E Home Video Amazon Marketplace: 13 new & used starting at $12.25

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Not the Steven Spielberg blockbuster, this Lost World is a splendid 2001 BBC TV dramatization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous adventure story. Bob Hoskins makes an unusually genial Professor Challenger, far less of a bully than Doyle's character, but his slightly stereotyped companions are nicely filled out by a solid cast. James Fox is Challenger's more timid but still covertly adventurous rival, Tom Ward is the mustachioed big-game hunter who faces an allosaur with an elephant gun, and Matthew Rhys plays the tagalong reporter hoping to impress his faithless fiancée.

As usual, the adaptation adds a woman--orphaned jungle girl Elaine Cassidy--to the expedition, and an interesting villain (religious fanatic Peter Falk) beefs up the travelogue by marooning Challenger's gang on the South American plateau where dinosaurs, cavemen, and Indians coexist eventfully. The Walking with Dinosaurs-style effects work well for the TV frame, but the real success is in integrating the adventuring with subtle eco-awareness, complex character interplay, and the reliable wonder of soaring pteranodons and carnosaur attacks. --Kim Newman

The Lost World

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Best Version Ever 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I can't believe nobody has reviewed this made-for-TV 2-part version of Arthur Conan Doyle's timeless story. First, I must point out what this is NOT:

This is NOT the lame, dino-muppet version with John Rhys-Davies
as Professor Challenger (which was also a 2-part TV movie, I
think, and it spawned an equally awful sequal).

This HAS NOTHING TO DO with the lame TV series of the same name.
Not its pilot movie, NOTHING.

This version stars Bob Hoskins (Kruschev in "Enemy at the Gates") as Challenger, and he plays him exactly as Doyle wrote him. It also stars Bernard Fox as the pompous Summerlee. I can't recall the younger actors' names right now, but they are all excellently cast as the naively impulsive Malone, the debonnaire but savage Lord Roxton, and the sweet but strong daughter of a missionary, a character not in the Doyle novel which I'll get to in a moment. These characters are well-developed and likeable.

The cinematography is rich, with victorian-era London and lush, amazonian jungles while the special effects are not your typically lame CGI animated monsters, but the highly realistic computer models originally developed for the BBC series "Walking with Dinosaurs". No mish-mash of dinos from varying ages here, the spotlight is on the few species that make up an eco-system and the bad boy of the reptiles here is the Allosaurus just as it was in Doyle's novel.

The script is extremely faithful to Doyle's novel, and I must applaud in particular the way it handles the ape-men. This film treats them in a sympathetic yet unsentimental light, choosing neither to demonize them or using them to make some politically correct statement. They are brutal and murderous, yet also capable of maternal love and communication. Just when you think they are about to reach an understanding with our band of explorers, they create a tragedy for the indian tribesmen among which our band has taken refuge, teaching Challenger a bitterly un-PC lesson in survival. The viewer can understand why the tribesmen want to kill all the ape-men, but at the same time, can't blame the ape-men for their actions considering the circumstances.

One area where this long tele-film deviates significantly from the source material is in the addition of a missionary who causes the band to be stranded (portrayed by Peter Falk). This will no doubt infuriate some religious viewers, but Falk's character obviously represents the "creationists" to Hoskin's rude and impatient Challenger who represents the evolutionists. Considering what the story is about, I thought this was an almost inescapable development overlooked by the other, far lesser versions of "the Lost World". But again, the scriptwriter handles the missionary sensitively, and Falk's brilliant portrayal makes the viewer feel the tragedy of his life, his anguish as he commits the unthinkable, spurred on by the threat to everything he thought he knew. This element, I feel, elevates this story beyond just another dinosaur adventure flick and redefines the novel to modern audiences.

Sadly, this 2-disc DVD set is no longer produced, but if you are a fan of "the Lost World", or like excellent, richly filmed adventures with great characters, snap up the used copies while you still have a chance. You won't be sorry. Should all available copies disappear, there should be a serious, letter campaign to get it re-issued as this is the best version of the novel ever filmed and it would be sad to let it drown amongst all the dreck that goes by the same name.

Editorial Review:

WIDESCREEN

History - Lost Worlds: Palenque

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Editorial Review:

Join our journey through time to relive some of the most crucial events in world history within the walls where they occurred. Following a team of historical detectives, we piece together clues, using evidence from recent excavations, state-of-the-art scientific studies, and historical documents. Today we venture to Palenque, a great Mayan city deep in the Mexican jungle, abandoned for over a thousand years. Mysterious tombs, palaces and temples covered by creepers have remained hidden from the world forcenturies. But how was this gigantic metropolis built, what purpose did the temples and palaces serve and how did this extraordinary city look at its height? As the clues are gathered, we rebuild the city, wall by wall, building by building, and the result is an historically accurate and stunningly beautiful vision of an ancient city.

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